Dollhouse
by loveadubdub
Summary: If they were on TV or in some stupid teen movie, they would team up as allies to take down the one boy who has been playing them both for a year.  But this is real life.  And in real life, Rachel Berry will always be her enemy.


**DOLLHOUSE**

…

An entire corner of her room is occupied by a huge vintage dollhouse.

It's been in the same place in her room for as long as she can remember. It was her mother's, and when Quinn was born, she passed it on. When she was younger, Quinn always believed that to mean that her mother held a secret level of favoritism toward her. After all, _she _was the one with the dollhouse- not Frannie, who was a full five years older. The fact that her sister was never gifted with such an elaborate present had to mean something.

Owning that dollhouse gave Quinn some level of acceptance in a world that was otherwise occupied by Frannie's pageant trophies and glittery tiaras.

While she herself was winning no beauty pageants, she could dress her dolls up and make them as beautiful as her sister. They could live out fantasy lifestyles in their enormous hand-crafted mansion. They could be _perfect. _And by some extension, so could she.

Now she's grown up, though.

She's seventeen and every bit the beautiful epitome of outward perfection that she always envied as a child. Her sister is still beautiful and married into the quiet suburbian life she was born for. The dolls no longer have to compete with her because Quinn herself won't be far behind.

But the dollhouse still sits in the same corner of her bedroom as it always has. She should move it out, but she can't. It's a symbol.

And Quinn knows what it stands for.

…

She doesn't know why she's obsessed with Rachel Berry.

If she looked at her life from the outside, she might find it creepy. But from the inside, she just can't help it. Rachel Berry is ruining her life, a goal she's been actively working toward for the better part of two years, and Quinn can't help but obsess over it.

And now it feels like everything in her world is about Rachel.

Rachel keeps shoving her way in, and no matter how hard Quinn pushes to keep her out, she still manages to squeeze in. It's possibly due to the fact that she's approximately the size of a four year old, but it's more likely due to the fact that she's annoying obsessive and doesn't know how to take a hint.

Every terrible thing that has happened over the past couple of years can be directly blamed on Rachel, and Quinn certainly hasn't overlooked this fact.

Looking back, she thinks the beginning of the end has an obvious starting point- the pregnancy.

While that can mostly be blamed on Puck and his supposed ability to pull out, it's actually Rachel's fault as well. If Rachel wasn't actively trying to steal her boyfriend at that point, Quinn probably (almost definitely) would never have cheated. If she hadn't cheated, she would still be a virgin and would never have been put through nine months of teenage hell. Maybe her whole life would still be intact.

She should have tried harder back then. She should have _forced _Finn to quit glee. She should have put her foot down and demanded that he never speak to that wretched little freak in the bad shoes. He might have listened- if she'd tried harder. If she'd _demanded _it, he probably would have obeyed.

But she let it go too far. And then she let Puck go too far. And then she had to pay for it.

And Rachel Berry sat back and watched the whole time.

…

Finn is pulling away from her.

She can tell because she's been through it before. He doesn't have the best attention span in the first place, but it's like she doesn't even _exist _anymore. And, of course, it can be blamed entirely on Rachel.

She's not surprised at all. He's drawn to that bitch like some kind of fly to honey or something. He's obsessed with her for some ungodly reason, and that's certainly no secret. But it's worse now. It's been worse for a few weeks, and it only gotten even more terrible since prom.

Prom was a disaster. It was supposed to be their night- _her _night. She had it planned to the tiniest detail, but all of that went to hell when she realized she was ending the night alone and found herself having to bum a ride home because Finn couldn't keep his hands to himself long enough make one single night actually about _her._

And now Jesse's back, so it's worse than ever.

Finn's obsession with Rachel is increased tenfold because, of course, he always wants what he can't have. If Rachel had no love prospects and was still pining for him, he would just watch from afar and still at least _attempt _the role of boyfriend with his actual girlfriend. But now that someone else wants her, Finn's entire purpose in life is suddenly getting Rachel back.

Quinn recognizes the pattern easily. It's classic Finn. _She _was single for months, and he never looked twice at her. Even before that, she would have left Puck in a literal _heartbeat _if Finn even _hinted _that he wanted her back. But he didn't. He had no interest in her until she was with Sam and semi-happy, and then suddenly he was kissing her in secret and making her once again cheat on a perfectly good boyfriend.

He's like a child who ignores a toy for months but then throws a full-on tantrum the second someone else picks it up.

It's annoying and disgusting, and yet she can't force herself to end it.

…

She and Santana don't talk.

They've never _really _been friends. Even when they were "best friends," they secretly hated each other. They both operated under the same _keep your enemies closer _clause, and really, it was fine because they both knew what it was.

But all that fake friendship ended ages ago.

It's weird, though. She's not really sure _why _they're not friends. They don't have to be rivals anymore. They're both off the Cheerios, and neither of them will ever be on top in glee. So, really, there's no reason they still need to hate each other.

But Santana's a bitch, and she'd throw everyone she knows under the bus if she thought it might put her a step ahead in life. And there's also the fact that she thinks _Quinn _is a bitch and makes no secret of it. So no, they're not friends.

But they really don't have to be enemies, either.

Actually, they kind of have a common enemy, so maybe that gives them some kind of middle ground.

"Finn's going to leave me for Rachel." She says it out of nowhere one day when they're waiting for glee to start. There are only a few people there, and everyone else is wrapped up in their own conversations. Santana tries her best not to socialize with ninety percent of the club, so she's sitting by herself. Quinn sits down next to her and waits for her response.

"Then you should thank that bitch," she answers calmly. "Because Finn is beyond disgusting."

Quinn wants to take up for him, but she can't. She has nothing to say. Because right now at this moment, she agrees.

"I want her to die." It's almost humorous because she and Santana don't even look at each other. They're both staring straight ahead, but they're having the calmest, quietest conversation they've maybe ever had.

"Kill her." She can see Santana shrug from the corner of her eye. "You can hide the body in my basement. Or we can just throw it under a bridge, so she can live with the rest of the trolls."

Quinn might smile if she wasn't seriously so bothered.

Rachel comes in then, smiling smugly like she's queen of the world or something. She sits down right in the middle of the front row and actually takes out a pen and a notebook. Apparently she's preparing to literally _take notes _from the boy who made an omelet on her face.

"She's so pathetic."

Santana is exactly correct.

…

Her mother makes her invite Finn to dinner at her grandparents'.

She tries to make up an excuse and say that he's busy and that he doesn't really do well in social settings, but her mom won't listen. She basically says that if Quinn doesn't invite him, she'll call Finn herself and ask him to come.

So Quinn tells him.

She knows he doesn't want to be there, and she can tell just by looking at him that he's uncomfortable and wants to go home. She might feel sorry for him if she wasn't not-so-secretly in hate with him.

They aren't even _trying _to be cordial lately. They just snap at each other and roll their eyes and don't talk about _anything _that doesn't involve Rachel. And Quinn pretty much wants to strangle him every single time he opens his mouth.

They get into another argument when he's driving her home from the dinner party. Quinn's glad that they drove separately from her mother because they're basic not _allowed _to fight around her mom. If they ever start to argue, her mom tells them to stop and forces the conversation in another direction.

Quinn's not surprised- she's seen her mother force conversations in new directions her entire life.

Finn starts this one. Maybe it's unintentional, but he should know by now that starting a conversation with _her _name is a one-way ticket to disaster. So Quinn has zero regret when she snaps on him for saying, "I just can't believe Rachel can't see through that jackass. He's going to screw us all over."

"_Stop _being obsessed with her!" And yes, she practically yells it. "_She's _not your girlfriend. _I _am."

And Finn rolls his eyes because that's what he loves to do. "That's not even what I'm talking about."

"It is _always _what you are talking about. You don't talk about anything else!"

"Whatever." He just shakes his head, and she seriously has the urge to just shove his head so hard that he cracks the driver's side window with it. She doesn't know where all these violent urges are coming from, but she's got a good hunch.

Quinn crosses her arms angrily and glares at the air in front of her. "I hope she takes him back and gets her own relationship, so she can stay out of _ours."_

Finn doesn't even acknowledge her.

…

For the rest of her life, she will always win the contest of the worst place to be dumped.

He breaks up with her at a _funeral._

He takes some devastating line that a woman says about her dead _sister _and uses it as a break up line. He might possibly be the worst person she's ever met. But no. No, she's not going to allow him to just _dump _her.

She tells him she can deal with his feelings for Rachel. She tries to tell him that next year things will be better and that they can be back on top. And he just tells her that he doesn't want her and then accuses her of not having feelings.

Fuck him.

She has plenty of feelings. Right at this very second, she _feels _like punching him. She _feels _like ripping his balls off. And she _feels _like telling him to go fuck off to hell.

But she just ends up crying.

And mostly she just feels like shit.

…

She doesn't tell her mom.

She doesn't tell anyone actually. She leaves the funeral and goes up to her room and cries for two hours. She hates crying. Literally _hates _it. Crying reminds her that she has hormones, and hormones remind her of unwanted pregnancies and baby girls who just turned a year old last month.

And she doesn't need to be reminded about any of that.

When she's done crying, she washes her face, changes into pajamas, and then goes downstairs for dinner.

Her mom gives her a glass of wine, and they eat reheated lasagna from last night's take-out. They smile at each other and talk about how warm it's gotten this week. They talk about the new rose garden that the next door neighbor just put in.

They do not talk about the men who screwed them over and threw them out like last month's Cosmo.

But that's mostly because they never talk.

…

She misses being a Cheerio.

On Monday morning, she realizes that this is literally the first time she has walked the halls of McKinley as a single girl without the protection of her uniform. She's not sure why that sticks out to her, but it's all she can think of.

She misses that uniform.

When she was a Cheerio, she was defined first and foremost by a red skirt and a high ponytail. Everything else came second. She's always been obsessed with perfection and finding the perfect people to fit into that ideal, but it honestly didn't matter who she was with. As long as she was a Cheerio, she belonged to something.

She was _on top._

Now she feels like she's been pushed to the bottom of the pyramid. She wants to vomit when she hears Rachel's voice in her head talking about the "proverbial pyramid of life."

She should have killed her and hid the body in Santana's basement when she had the chance.

…

Sometimes she misses her old life.

She misses when she was still young and still had both her parents and a sister around to take care of her. It's funny now to look back on that and realize how pathetic her loneliness was back then. She wasn't _lonely. _She had her whole family. Her mother, her father, Frannie... She had an entire church family that loved her and didn't judge her for having a baby out of wedlock and giving it away.

Now she doesn't have any of those things.

Everyone at church talks about her- they have for more than a year now. Frannie's living the perfect little fairy tale life and checks in maybe twice a month- and only then because _she'd _be judged if she didn't. Her father is long gone somewhere (Quinn neither knows nor cares at this point). And while her mother is physically there, she's basically not much more than a glass of gin and a couple of Vicodin that can walk and talk.

She is seriously alone.

It hits her as she's sitting alone in chemistry one day that she has _no _friends.

She's really never had friends. Even when she was the most popular girl in school, she was still basically friendless. She doesn't know how that happened. When she was in middle school no one wanted to sit with her at lunch because she was a freak. When she got to high school, she was the opposite of freak, and _everyone _wanted a seat at her lunch table.

The amount of actual friends in that scenario did not change.

She wonders why she never noticed before.

…

Rachel stalks her to the girls' bathroom after first period one day and pretty much traps her there.

She stands outside the stall door for a full five minutes until Quinn has no choice but to leave. She ignores her, of course, and just walks to the sink to wash her hands. She has nothing to say to Rachel. Or actually, she has a _lot _to say, but she won't. She's done playing this game.

Too bad Rachel's never been one to take a hint.

"I'm sorry about you and Finn."

She shouldn't say that. Out of all the things in the world that she could _possibly _say, she's somehow managed to stumble upon the worst. Still, Quinn keeps her composure and rinses her hands with her head held straight and her reflection trained directly in the mirror.

"You're not sorry," she says calmly. "If you were, you would have stopped chasing him months ago."

"I wasn't... I, I didn't..." Rachel stutters, clearly because she knows she's full of shit.

"Yes, you did," Quinn cuts her off. "You did, and you know you did. So now you can have him. Congratulations." She turns the water off and reaches for a paper towel.

Rachel looks embarrassed. She glances down at the floor and kind of chews on her bottom lip. The last time they were in a bathroom together, Quinn slapped her, and Rachel helped her fix her make up. There is something seriously wrong with this girl. Seriously.

And yet, she apparently hasn't told anyone about that incident at prom. Quinn expected it to be dumping bait for Finn, but he's never mentioned it. So not only does Rachel enjoy being physically abused, she also apparently suffers from some screwed up bullying version of Stockholm's Syndrome.

It explains so much.

Eggs, slushies, insults, drawings, _slaps. _And she just forgives and forgets.

Bitch.

"I didn't mean for this to happen." Rachel's voice is quiet. It's obvious that she's trying to make herself seem more sympathetic than she really is, and Quinn just can't take it.

"Just stop." Rachel looks at her, and Quinn wonders if she literally _tries _to turn every single second of her life into some huge dramatic moment because her facial expressions are just not normal. "Stop," she says again. "We've done this before, Rachel. It's like deja vu. And once again, you win. So, please, just _take _him."

"That's not-"

"How do you do it?" Quinn cuts her off and doesn't care that the bell rings right over her question. She has no interest in getting to class right now.

"Do what?"

"This is the second time you've stolen him. The second time you've managed to worm your way into _my _relationship. And yet, you still somehow manage to come off looking like the victim... How is that, Rachel?"

Rachel doesn't say anything. She probably _can't. _What is there to say? It doesn't matter, though, because Quinn has no interest in allowing her to speak.

"Why do you always have to take _everything? _You ruin _everything."_

She feels a terrible little sting behind her eyes, and she wants to throw up. She will not cry here. Not in front of her. Not again.

"I didn't mean..." Rachel's voice trails off because she knows she has no leg to stand on. She's a liar, and she knows it.

Quinn stares her down, somewhat pleased that Rachel at least looks slightly worried about their proximity. She looks a lot smaller when she's scared, and there's some level of pleasure in that.

"You think your life is so terrible... You've got a one-way ticket out of this place, and you _still _have to take everything. Why should _you _get it all?"

Rachel looks confused, and when she mumbles, "I don't even know what you're talking about," Quinn actually believes her.

"You could have any of them," she snaps, hating the way her voice is edging just slightly out of control. "You can have Finn... You can have Jesse... Hell, you could even have _Puck. _So which one do you want, Rachel? Take your pick!"

Rachel just blinks at her. She opens and closes her mouth several times before any kind of sound comes out. "I... I don't want Puck..." And she stares at the ground because she doesn't even have the decency to make eye contact.

Quinn looks at her for a long moment and then shakes her head.

She leaves the bathroom and doesn't care one bit that Rachel had tears in her eyes right before she looked down.

It's dumb. If they were on TV or in some stupid teen movie, they could team up and become allies. They've both been played by the same boy for two years now, and pop culture dictates that they should form some girl code and team up to take him down and reclaim their independence. If this were TV or a movie, they would end up as best friends.

But this is real life, and Rachel Berry will always be her enemy.

…

Sam pulls a Rachel and stalks Quinn to the bathroom.

Only this time it's at church, and he at least has the decency to wait in the hallway. She's kind of surprised when she sees him standing there. The service isn't even halfway over, and this entire wing of the building is empty. Everyone's in the sanctuary, which is where he _should _be. But he's not.

"Stop crying over it," he tells her before she has a chance to ask any questions. When she raises her eyebrows, he elaborates. "I know you've been crying over it. Over Finn or whatever... But just stop. It's not worth it."

"I'm not crying." And there isn't a tear on her cheek to disprove her statement.

"Not like right this second, but... Come on, Quinn." He just looks at her, and she kind of hates him for being so nice. She cheated on him. Repeatedly. And he's still nice to her.

Jerk.

"I'm not crying," she repeats. "She can have him."

"It's not important."

She wants to shake him and say that _yes, it is very important. _She wants to tell him that image is everything and that without the star quarterback boyfriend and without her Cheerios uniform, she's just another glee loser. And being a glee loser doesn't get you anything except slushie facials.

But she doesn't say any of that. Not to him. She can't lecture him on the importance of appearances when he's living in a cheap motel room with four other people.

Instead, she just says, "You don't understand..."

Sam shakes his head. "You think you don't have anything," he tells her, and he sounds so damn sincere that she can't stand it. "But you're wrong. You've got a lot, Quinn. And you're better than all this."

He's staring at her in that way that only _he's _ever stared at her. Sam Evans is the only boy who has ever actually been in _love _with her.

And she couldn't love him back.

She feels her eyes start to water before she can stop them. And he keeps shaking his head, like maybe he's telling her not to cry again. But she can't help it. And the tears start falling before she can do anything about it.

"I'm sorry," she whispers, and she's not sure she's ever felt worse about anything in her entire life. "I'm sorry, Sam..."

He hugs her and lets her cry, and it's the first time she's ever felt like she has a real friend.

…

For the first time in seventeen years, she has an empty corner in her bedroom.

The dollhouse is upstairs in the attic. She doesn't need it. It represents nothing but fake appearances. Fake perfection. And fake happiness.

And she finally wants the real thing.

…

A/N: So... I wrote Quinn. Yeah, I'm shocked, too. But damn, cut that girl a break, show! Or at least leave her to the inevitable mental breakdown that's brewing there. Just something, geez.

(Oh, and I do not know if Frannie is actually her sister's name, but it seems to be the general consensus, so I went with it).


End file.
